Lady Antebellum singer Hillary Scott tearfully revealed Monday that she suffered a miscarriage last year. “Last fall, I went through a miscarriage,” she said on Good Morning America. “This is something that is not talked about very often. I also feel like there’s this pressure that you’re supposed to be able to snap your fingers and continue to walk through life like it never happened."

Scott, 30, explained that she channeled her pain into her music and wrote the song “Thy Will” while in her "most raw place" while "experiencing everything that comes with a miscarriage." Now, she’s a “different mom” to her 2-year-old daughter. “I hug her a lot tighter,” she said.

Unfortunately, Scott’s experience isn’t rare. According to the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, miscarriages—defined as a pregnancy loss that occurs before 20 weeks—happen in 10 percent of all recognized pregnancies. But that fact doesn’t make miscarriage any easier for women who are actually going through it.

“There’s the obvious fact that it’s the loss of a child, but it’s also the loss of a woman’s dream for her child,” Tamar Gur, M.D., Ph.D., a women’s health expert and reproductive psychiatrist at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, tells SELF. “It’s not just those few days of excitement after finding out you’re pregnant. In those days, women can dream a lifetime of excitement. It’s very difficult.”

Those feelings of grief are also exacerbated by hormonal and physical changes that come with suffering a miscarriage, licensed clinical psychologist Alicia H. Clark, Psy.D., tells SELF. “A miscarriage is a whole-body experience where, in a moment, everything changes,” she says. “This isn't easy, and takes time to recover from.”

It can also cause women to doubt their ability to be able to have any children in the future, licensed clinical psychologist John Mayer, Ph.D., author of Family Fit: Find Your Balance in Life, tells SELF—a scary thought if you’ve always planned to have kids. “That is a deep, deep pain for a woman,” he says. Luckily, the chances of having a successful pregnancy after a miscarriage are good for most women. Fewer than five percent of women will have two miscarriages in a row, according to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine.

While there’s no “right” way to cope with a miscarriage, experts say there are ways to move forward. Gur stresses that women should allow themselves the time to grieve. “For a few days, don’t go to work; go to your happy place,” she says. “Go to the beach, go on a hike, sleep over at your parents’ house—do whatever it is that brings you comfort.”

Mayer says women should also understand that miscarriage is like any other loss and there are different stages of grief—you may feel denial and isolation, anger, guilt (thinking “If only I had done this…”), depression, and acceptance.

Really, there's no set way to grieve. “Everyone handles this differently—what was right for your friend might not work for you,” Gur says. Some people may find comfort in talking about it and visiting support groups for miscarriages, she says, while others might need to process everything internally in their own time. “It’s important for women to use the coping strategy that has helped them in life so far,” Gur says.

If talking about it is the best way for you to move forward, Clark says it’s important to do so in a way that’s constructive. “Research shows that when talking about a loss, constructing a narrative of healing is helpful,” she says. “Talk about your feelings, talk about your sadness, and also talk about how you are surviving the pain.”

In general, women don’t go through major episodes of depression following a miscarriage, but it can be a trigger for depression in some women, Gur says. If you find that you’re having trouble getting out of bed a few weeks after your miscarriage or have thoughts that life isn’t worth living, she says it’s important to reach out to a mental health professional for help (your ob/gyn may have a good recommendation).

While experts agree that miscarriage isn’t something women just get over, they say it does get better with time. “It will be something that you carry with you for the rest of your life,” Gur says. “But, as your life carries on, it won’t be as raw and horrible as it initially was.”